Our Relationship With Love

"...there is no real reality, no full life, outside of the relationship with Love,

because God Himself wraps Himself eternally in relationship; God the 

Father, God the Son, and God the Goly Spirit existing in relationship, an 

encircling dance of communion sweetest.  

God is love - everywhere! everything! - and He can only be love

because He exists in triune relationship...

I can't simply ignore His serenade because I'm unsure, uncomfortable, 

uninterested, thinking I've claimed Christ as my Savior already anyways.

God is relationship and He woos us to relationship and there is nothing

with God if there is no relationship."

Ann Voskamp, 1,000 Gifts

Happy Friday all!  I am just wrapping up Ann Voskamp's book, 1,000 Gifts, and it has been soooo good!  It has brought so much perspective to me on faith and thankfulness and intimate relationship with my Savior.  The quote above struck me because so many times I've believed the lie that "I've claimed Christ as my Savior anyway" and forgotten that I have nothing that really fulfills me outside of real and intimate relationship with Him.  Lord how I've failed to wrap myself up in you even though you constantly pursue me!

Forget about the rules, the traditions, the ideas of how things should be for a moment.  Put aside judgments of what a real Christ follower should look like or sound like or act like for a moment and just BE with the Lover of Your Soul!  Find your peace and your joy in relationship with your Father.  Nurture your relationship with Him like you would with a boyfriend or husband or child.  Spend time getting to know Him.  What is His personality like?  How does He really feel about you?  He will meet you right where you are at and He will fill you like no other on Earth can!  I promise you if you take the time to find your identity in real relationship with the One who created you, your life will change.

God is in the Darkness

"Trauma's storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie.

I draw all the hurting voices close and I touch their scars with a whisper:

sometimes we don't fully see that in Christ, because of Christ,

through Christ, He does give us all things good - until we have

the perspective of years.  In time, years, dust settles.

In memory, ages, God emerges.  Then when we look back,

we see God's back.  Wasn't that too His way with Moses?

 "When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and 

cover you with my hand until I have passes by. Then I will 

remove my hand and you will see my back" (Exodus 33:22-23).

Is that it?  When it gets dark, it's only because God has 

tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with

HIs hand?  In the pitch, I feel like I'm falling, sense the bridge giving

way, God long absent.  In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, 

cracking dreams.  But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that

God is passing by.  The bridge and our lives shake not because 

God has abandoned, but the exact opposite:  

God is passing by.

God is in the tremors.

In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging HIs perfect and right 

will.  Though it is black and we can't see and and our world seems 

to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us, 

I-beam supporting in earthquake.  Then He will remove His hand.

Then we will look.  Then we look back and see His back."

Ann Voskamp

One Thousand Gifts